on a sunday afternoon

After Mass this morning, we drove to visit my best friend and her family. Our husbands cooked a delicious brunch while we took care of the seven kids. Afterwards, they left to play a round of golf. (Have I mentioned that my husband has taken up golf? His brother had to learn for his job - it's a client networking thing - and Adam decided to dust off his clubs from high school and start playing again.) We had a nice time talking while the kids played together. I really hope we can get together a little more often, especially now that our husbands have a little more in common with the whole golfing thing.

One of the things that we talked about was toy management and we both agreed that our kids have way too many toys and most of them end up getting ignored, at best, or abused, at worst. We currently have a big Rubbermaid storage bin that I have been filling with unloved toys for the last two weeks. I've even *gasp* been donating some of our books to the library either for their use or their used book store. I have probably purchased more books from the used book store than I have donated, but when you're unloading something like Baby Bop's Counting Book and books like Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Tikki Tikki Tembo catch your eye, could you pass them up? I couldn't.

Our newest book, however, just came from home with us from my best friends house. As we were picking up toys and books, I started drooling over her copy of A Time To Keep: The Tasha Tudor Book of Holidays (it's on my Amazon Wish List for a reason). I also mentioned that Go, Dog. Go! was one of my husband's favorite books as a boy as I picked it up off the floor. She asked if I wanted a copy because she had two! How can a girl say no to something like that? Happy mom. Happy dad. Happy kids.